Blogger Jim Grey called a few months ago with interesting news. He had purchased a few glass plate negatives on Ebay (of all places) that were entitled Dandy Trail photos. We agreed to meet at the Traders Point Loft for lunch so that he could show me the negatives. While we waited for lunch he carefully unwrapped one of the 4″ x 6″ sheets of glass and passed it to me. There is a certain excitement known to photographers when they see a negative image. From my darkroom days I knew that conventional printing of these glass plates into positive images would be a delicate job best left to professionals. (Although I had recently used the white board of a computer screen to photograph over 100 glass plates from Pike Township’s earliest days and reversed them in Photoshop, Jim wanted these images printed and digitally saved by pros.)

This morning I received an email from Jim with a hyperlink to the professionally remastered images. With his permission I repost one of these. (To see all 7 images you’ll need to click on over to Jim’s flicker collections.) Thanks Jim, these are awesome.

Please help us identify the couple in the image. They would have been born in the 1860s – 1870s(?) and they may have been Dandy’s owners! Dandy Trail was an 88 mile roadway surrounding Indianapolis in the early 1900s. Named for a dog belonging to an executive with the Hoosier Motor Club, the roadway entered Traders Point just north and west of Eagle Creek and just south of what is now the Farm Bureau Coop and Salt Barn. Dandy Trail was the primary route into Traders Point for the valley residents south of the village.

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Chris O’Malley

May 3, 2012

With knobby tires and shock absorbers, a mountain bike peddled by a skilled rider can smite the roughest trail with a cloud of dust. Mountain bikers have salivated for years about building trails in the rolling hills of Eagle Creek Park, the city’s largest municipal park.

At the same time, environmental advocates warn such trails would lead to erosion and more sedimentation in the park’s reservoir, which is used for drinking water. Perhaps it’s no wonder Indy Parks and Recreation hasn’t been in a hurry to take up the issue of mountain bike trails. But that’s about to change.

“We are looking to schedule a public listening session,” said Indy Parks spokeswoman Jen Pittman. The session could be held late this month or early next, she said.

“This deserves to be heard. We know there’s a high level of interest” from both sides, Pittman said.

That will be welcome news to the Hoosier Mountain Bike Association, which complained in a recent e-mail to its members that park management “refused to even consider Eagle Creek” for such trails.

“I want to be very clear that HMBA is done asking nicely about Eagle Creek,” HMBA President Paul Arlinghaus told his members. “We require Eagle Creek to be on the table. [We want to see] progress toward a trail master plan that includes Eagle Creek.”

Local environmental activists, including Clarke Kahlo, are concerned about the effects.

“I hope Indy Parks will be able to resist HMBA’s apparent demanding, if not ‘strongarm,’ tactics. Eagle Creek Park is an ecological gem, but will cease to be so if mountain bike trails are permitted,” Kahlo said in a letter to city officials.

Arlinghaus told IBJ that mountain bikers have grown frustrated over Eagle Creek management’s reluctance to take up the issue in past years. Frustration came to a head recently when park management quickly approved a zip line for the park, the kind of use not even hinted at in past master plans.

Some mountain bikers said they were led to believe that features such as bike trails and zip lines needed to be included in a master plan before they could proceed.

The contract with a private zip-line operator “puts money in [Eagle Creek’s] pockets, so it just happens,” Arlinghaus said.

Arlinghaus disputed concerns that mountain biking trails would pose a risk to the environment. He said the trails can take up to four years to open because the effect on local plants and animals would have to be carefully considered.

“Designing a trail is a very complicated process,” he said.

Mountain bikers use trails in Indianapolis-area parks. Fort Harrison State Park has two trails. And the City of Indianapolis has them in Town Run Trail Park at 5325 E. 96th St. Bicycle paths also were built at Southeastway Park in southeast Marion County.

Pittman said that while the mountain bike trail topic has come up during various meetings over the years, Indy Parks staff couldn’t remember a meeting dedicated to the topic.

“We do want to make sure we’re getting it right and not just acting quickly,” she said.

Although Eagle Creek doesn’t have dedicated mountain bike trails, its narrow arteries often swarm with packs of on-road bicyclists. The park prohibits bicycles on its hiking trails. Some mountain bikers ride on a grass-covered service road on the northern end of the reservoir, near the 71st Street gate. But that route is relatively short.

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Today I went to a Pike Township Historical Society meeting. Joe Wagle of New Augusta shared a couple of 3 minute 8mm color movies his Dad made in 1956. One was of the May 1956 flood at Traders Point. The movies are in living color. The stills below are grainy (my apologies) and were shot directly from the tv screen as I paused the dvd (Joe had transferred the movie to DVD so that he could share it with our group and he gave me a copy of the cdr.) I chose to go with stills because it allowed me to freeze frame the best images of the movies. But there may be merit in posting the movies and I may do that at a later date. It’s kind of fun to look at the journey these images have had: first they were filmed in 8 mm. At the time they would have been sent out for development, returned to the customer on a small reel, placed by the customer on a projector at home, projected onto a wall or screen, and put away for who knows how long (in this case about 55 years). Joe transferred them to DVD so that he could save them as digital images and record to a computer as digital files. The CDR he gave me was made on I-Movie. Then I used my iphone to record these images that were frozen when I paused the movie at the images I wanted to capture. I then emailed the images to my gmail account, cropped and enhanced the images in paint.net and posted them to this blog.

the Conarroe's Traders Point Market was located in northwest corner of Eagle Creek and Lafayette Road

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Bill Kappel retired from operating the Farm Bureau Co-op at the end of 2011. A fixture in the Traders Point area for several decades, Bill, his wife, and their son Greg, operated the only remaining business in the village of Traders Point. They will be missed. The facility, owned by the City of Indianapolis through its Department of Public Works, is now vacant.